Five Best

As July Fourth nears, author David Gelernter
raises a cheer for these books about America

By

David Gelernter

Updated June 30, 2007 12:01 a.m. ET

1. On Two Wings By Michael Novak Encounter, 2002

Michael Novak describes the nation's birth as it happened, not the way our aggressively secular society likes to remember it. Two wings lofted the American eagle into flight, writes Novak: Enlightenment philosophy and the nation's compact with "the God of the Jews," meaning "the God of Israel championed by the nation's first Protestants." Novak marshals impressive evidence, including the remarkable scene in September 1774 when a clergyman read Psalm 35...